ICv2 Reports On RPGs Growth This Year

ICv2 has published its latest quarterly hobby channel game rankings for Spring 2022. The Top 5 contains D&D twice (once from WotC, and once from third parties Goodman Games and Darrington Press/Critical Role), along with two licensed Hasbro (owner of WotC) properties, plus Pathfinder.

"RPGs are the story of the year so far," a hobby distributor told ICv2. "D&D’s king by leaps and bounds, don’t get me wrong, but the number of RPGs that were [significant contributors to] sales was 40 different brands."

The chart is based on interviews with retailers, distributors, and manufacturers. As always you can see the compiled chart going back to 2004 here.

RPGs the 'Story of the Year'

Explosive Growth in Players, Sales

icv2.com

 

[Gammadoodler]

True. But at the rate the PHB is selling it might be headed there. Or at least a lot bigger.

I certainly hope so. There are some structural challenges that make it tough to match some of the straight consumer markets (needing a group, role asymmetry between DM and players) on a logistics basis.

I think a good metric to look at long term would be something like participation compared to youth sports, marching band, etc. If the hobby gets to a place where it's talked about in the same sentence with those things, then I think we'll have "arrived"

 

[Shardstone]

Methinks someone missed the point. None of those games you listed were Hasbro-licensees!

Methinks I’ll spell it out for you my good fellow. To make a parallel example, it would as if in, say, in the year 2006 (when 4e was first announced, two years before its 2008 release) Hasbro licensed out their MTG IP and Axis & Allies IP to another RPG studio, and that studio announced they were going to use D&D 3.5e (or at least the 3.5 SRD d20 system).

But then a few months later, they say: “f**k that, we’re going to make our own system called Essence20, which only has four attributes, and which is mechanically a lot more streamlined than 3.5e/d20. Because we found through playtesting, that our target audience—the vast world of MTG and A&A players who’ve never played D&D before—was f***king stumped by the gigantic and complex rulebook and legacy quirks of 3.5e.”

And then MTG and Axis and Allies become two of the top five sellers in the RPG market.

At that time, an ENWorld member (a 2006 version of myself) suggests that it would be wise for Wizards to take note of this highly successful Essence20 system (which licensees of Hasbro produced, in conscious defiance of D&D 3.5) as they prepare the groundwork for the upcoming 4th edition.

Methinks another ENWorld member strolls by and not only misses the point, but also makes personal inferences about the OP’s longevity which are off the mark and kinda irksome.

Typing in all methinks man...come on bro.

 

[Von Ether]

Just as a note, there isn’t a ‘5E OGL’. There’s just the OGL, published 20 years ago. It’s the same OGL.

Which I find entertaining.

I know of a fellow who decided to "convert" D&D stuff into another game system's community content program. He posted both a 3e and 5e OGL in the back of his PDF to cover himself for using D&D SRD terms. But I digress.

 

[Morrus]

He posted both a 3e and 5e OGL in the back of his PDF to cover himself for using D&D SRD terms. But I digress.

So he copy/pasted the OGL twice?

 

[Jer]

So he copy/pasted the OGL twice?

It wouldn't be exactly the same - the copyright notices are different. I can see how someone might not realize that if they really wanted to cover their behind and include both the 3e and 5e SRD content as references they just have to update the copyright notice and not reproduce the license for each SRD.

 

[Von Ether]

Rising tides has been proven to actually not be a true thing in the bigger economy. Turns out Reagan's "Rising Tides" actually just made things a lot worse for the American economy and was a categorical lie. So, while it is cool that I can actually get projects funded on Kickstarter due to 5E popularity, its like, if you combine every indie Kickstarter in the last year and put the amount that Kickstarter earned against 5E, you literally still wouldn't have more then a 4th of 5E's capital.

In this case, its more like there's such a massive storm of customers and profits around 5E that the rest of us have juuuuuuust enough rain water to not die of thirst. Or well, at least before Covid destroyed shipping and handling!

While I agree on the fail on a larger economy, I've already seen players at the hobby shop starting to sniffing around this year for "something different" than D&D. People are discovering Gumshoe, CoC, GURPS, Cypher and other games.

Even on the plane back from GenCon, I had a 3 year player of D&D say he was looking for other stuff as a reaction to 5e being everywhere. Sadly his hometown is long drive from the big city, so his pickings might be slim in RL vs an online game.

But yeah, I get you. One of Amazon's original investors said, "I make as much a 10, 000 middle class families. That doesn't mean I buy 10,000 pairs of jeans."

 

[Von Ether]

So he copy/pasted the OGL twice?

Yep!

 

[doctorhook]

I know of a fellow who decided to "convert" D&D stuff into another game system's community content program. He posted both a 3e and 5e OGL in the back of his PDF to cover himself for using D&D SRD terms. But I digress.

When all else fails, just slap as many legal disclaimers as possible—that way, all your bases are covered! /s

 

[teitan]

Methinks someone missed the point. None of those games you listed were Hasbro-licensees!

Methinks I’ll spell it out for you my good fellow. To make a parallel example, it would as if in, say, in the year 2006 (when 4e was first announced, two years before its 2008 release) Hasbro licensed out their MTG IP and Axis & Allies IP to another RPG studio, and that studio announced they were going to use D&D 3.5e (or at least the 3.5 SRD d20 system).

But then a few months later, they say: “f**k that, we’re going to make our own system called Essence20, which only has four attributes, and which is mechanically a lot more streamlined than 3.5e/d20. Because we found through playtesting, that our target audience—the vast world of MTG and A&A players who’ve never played D&D before—was f***king stumped by the gigantic and complex rulebook and legacy quirks of 3.5e.”

And then MTG and Axis and Allies become two of the top five sellers in the RPG market.

At that time, an ENWorld member (a 2006 version of myself) suggests that it would be wise for Wizards to take note of this highly successful Essence20 system (which licensees of Hasbro produced, in conscious defiance of D&D 3.5) as they prepare the groundwork for the upcoming 4th edition.

Methinks another ENWorld member strolls by and not only misses the point, but also makes personal inferences about the OP’s longevity which are off the mark and kinda irksome.

Nope. Still the same. They used the OGL to make a game that fit what they needed. That they’re a licensor is not a difference maker and is just you adding a layer to it that is meaningless. It’s a third party company that picked up a license that WOTC didn’t want to work with and Hasbro is getting free money for them to develop and use. It will have zero effect on anything that WOTC does with 6e unless they hire on people from Renegade to develop 6e 2 years ago with massively successful credentials like when they brought in Monte Cook as a consultant for 5e and imported his casting system from Arcana Unearthed with using higher and lower level spell slots to alter how spells work. The name on the game has nothing to do with anything. Don’t read into it. You missed my point that all those people with those successful games were WOTC staffers at one point and have been at WOTC since as well consulting and developing as freelancers on products. We still don’t have Damage saves instead of hit points.

 

[Von Ether]

The next evolution in ttprg, everything, classes, "spells," and gear are bolt on mechanics which just painlessly transfer to a new core dice mechanic once you are tried of using a d20.